"We can't talk money until you have been interviewed by everyone in the building but this is a really great opportunity and I know once you meet the team at Arby's you'll be smitten, I've worked with Phillip for the last 3 months and he walks on water."
No, I don't think so. I put my resume online recently, and I started getting some "opportunities" that were absolute garbage. Like, $19/hour for circuit board testing. Um, hello? You didn't bother to look at the resume very hard, did you? That 35 years of software engineering experience should tell you that I'm not looking for anything like that.
So if you're throwing me a job that is completely unsuited, no, don't tell me if you hear of anything else. You're just throwing every job at every candidate, and hoping that something sticks for someone. In the process, you're wasting my time (and everyone else's). The odds are too high that your next "opportunity" is also going to be a waste of my time, so no, don't let me know.
I don't expect them to actually do it, it's just a way to end the conversation on a positive note. They're going to add you to the spam db whatever you say.
I'd rather end with a polite "no, not interested in other opportunities", in the home that at least some of the time, they won't continue to spam me.
And, in fact, I just went through this. I was job hunting, and I put my resume on Monster and Indeed. I started getting garbage offers by email - offers that looked like they detected that I was "technical" and a job was "technical", but not much closer than that. But most of those emails also had a (not very obvious!) "unsubscribe" button. Surprisingly, that actually worked. (I mean, there were a number of such places, so I had to do it several times...)
I can handle the email spam. Just a thought, but I have a presentation number on my CV that's only active when I'm jobhunting - otherwise it just rings out. Are you talking about phone spam? That would be several million times more irritating.
No, it was email spam. Fortunately, I haven't had recruiters phone spamming me. I have had cold calls, but when I say "not interested", they don't continue.
YMMV, but I can count the number of overly persistent recruiters after saying "no" on one hand. I don't respond to everyone, but I'm also not hardballing when I do respond.
Even if you're sure you don't want them, pay attention to how they operate. Are they the kind of recruiter that you want to deal with when you are looking? Then make a note of who they are. Keep a file of recruiters that you want to deal with. When the time comes that you want to move, use that list as a starting point.
> Then make a note of who they are. Keep a file of recruiters that you want to deal with.
This is why I dislike linkedin. When everything was done via email, it was much simpler to find all previous interactions with that person if they cropped up again. My own minimal CRM.
I look for extremely niche jobs so I often say "When I do switch, I'm looking for a C# or Rust desktop dev job in a Math/Science setting" or similar. Because if you'd only switch to 1 job of 10k, then you really don't want to miss that one (Also, you can't be picky about comp, but that's a separate story). I have actually had recruiters reach out years later because they found something.
For most companies I would give them "I want 300k CAD base salary to consider it" & that'd usually end the conversation right there
A year ago Timescale reached out, seemed like an interesting situation (good fit since I work on Citus), so I lowered the bar & told them I'd want 190k CAD base & 40k CAD signing bonus to consider it. They said that fell in range. Interviews went well. Unfortunately it turned out my ask wasn't in range: 180k CAD (apparently this was top of range for the level's band now) & only some options for signing, base would be total comp since it'd be as a contractor
So I let them know when I say "I want X to consider the position" that means I'm telling them a hard limit floor. Still, having a competing offer that was somewhat competitive with my current role (base quite a bit lower, but shares/bonus make up good portion of total comp) enabled late promo with nice raise
So this worked out for me, but recruiters will tell you X is okay & then try talk you down at the end. Maybe my wording should've been clearer that I was disclosing my floor to them
You're pretty optimistic, but you don't know how scummy some of them can actually be. A few years back, I did exactly this, the recruiter agreed, I went through the whole interview process, _put in my two weeks notice at my current job_ and then the recruiter said, "Oh, by the way, they said they couldn't meet your salary expectations, they can offer (less than you were making at your current job)".
100% agree. A tangent to this which I’ve found striking when talking to friends in other professions, is how spoiled I’ve been as a developer. I’ve _never_ had to apply for a job. Whenever I’ve been ready to move on I’ve just flipped that “open for suggestions” switch and within a couple of weeks I’ve signed on for a new company.
As far as I’ve heard, that doesn’t happen in other industries. People work their asses off _looking_ for work.
Even if I also sometimes get annoyed with particularly generic outreaches, I check myself and remind myself how lucky I am to have that problem.
A few years ago I've transitioned from working in my country to working remotely for US companies. Now I'm back in this boat. Most US companies that do remote do not hire outside of the US and those that do get so many CVs that you have to put a lot of hard effort to even get an interview. Getting a job is months of dedicated work.
Absolutely worth it. Pay is multiples of what European companies pay, culture is way better and colleagues are exceptional.
Just get a US graduate degree from a great school that is online like Stanford ($70k), UIUC ($25k), UT ($10k) or GT ($6k) and they'll be all over you regardless of where you are. Alternatively, use TopTal, A-team, Tribe.ai etc. for US gigs.
Our industry does not really care about degrees. The places that do are crappy and you don't want to work there.
I've worked without a degree for 20 years. Recently got one for personal achievement purposes. Totally not worth it from an career investment perspective, IMHO.
Just to give a different perspective on degrees, I did get a BS (Applied Math and Computer Science at an engineering school) and in my late 20's secured a large contract with IBM at Ford. Ford wanted me to do the work (they knew me from a previous contract), but IBM wanted a large contracting company to do the work. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't had a degree, I would have never gotten that contract.
I can't say I learned much of anything useful in college, but I didn't want to be that guy that constantly was passed over for promotions and opportunities because I didn't have a degree and a less-qualified person did.
I assume you are in the US. The original poster was outside US fighting thousands other CVs applying for remote US jobs. One way to distinguish oneself is to have some US symbol on the CV, like a top school, or a top employer.
If you have the connections, knowing someone inside the company (e.g. from an open source project) and asking them to move your CV inside the company for you will be a faster and cheaper way to get in.
When I looked at it, Toptal required a four week unpaid project as part of their "vetting" procedures. I'm still not sure who is actually willing to put themselves through that.
Not sure, I think it's 1 week but doable in 1 day? Anyway, taking those "remote agency" projects can help the poster to get some money while they are searching for a proper US-based arrangement. And they can land jobs that pay $200/h on TopTal as well (uncommon though).
> how spoiled I’ve been as a developer. I’ve _never_ had to apply for a job
Well, if that's been your consistent experience, you're spoiled even _for_ a developer - I have 30 years experience and a decent degree in CS, and I've had to go looking for new jobs whenever I've needed one and been turned down for many, but I do agree the process is _way_ easier than any other line of work.
Of course recruiters can be useful, but you need to understand their limitations. They just want to shortlist five candidates to a prospective client, and beyond this, they don't care.
Of course, they can be helpful if you end up on their shortlist. However, I would also recommend applying directly to jobs. Recruiters do not care if the job you are applying will result in working for the devil himself, as long as they get their commission.
> Over the last 20 years a programmer, team lead and technical architect. I'm a father and podcast on topics in professional development and software engineering
I don't see any harm personally in responding with a generic copy pasta letting them know that I'm not looking, but thanks for reaching out, but I suspect than 9 out of 10 recruiters that do reach out to me will be out of the recruiting business long before I find myself looking.
Recruiters are paid to get someone (you?) to a position: it is not their job to care on whether that's the best choice for you.
The recommendations on the article require quite a lot of time managing recruiters, and it is only a matter of time, if everybody starts using these "techniques" that recruiters will devise defenses...
So I'll give an opposite view: ignore random recruiters. Use the time to setup alerts for companies/jobs you really aspire to get to, and fight for those instead.
There’s also a cost to getting a job using a recruiter vs. finding it on your own. The company has to pay the recruiter, which means less money available for you in the negotiation process.
This can go either way. At my present company, HR budget eats the recruiter cost because it is seen as outsourcing an HR function.
Others may charge it back to the hiring department and it’s eating into hiring bonus budget. Otoh, many companies pay hiring bonuses out of the HR budget.
Do you have any advice on how to set up those alerts? I've noticed that a lot of the companies that I would like to work for only list roles on their sites rather than Indeed.
Many companies start with recruiters though, so you may need to start with a recruiter if you want to get in. It is easy to call a recruiter and ask for someone on a 6 month contract, at the end of 6 months you either know they are good and hire them (and they know you are good), or you know they are bad and close the contract finding a new person. Hacker News regularly has articles about hiring, but nobody gives evidence their hiring process is actually any good - they just state what they do and why they believe in it - but this looks like a religious belief not something verified by any form of rigor.
That's the beauty of the free market. Farmers are paid to put food in someone's (your?) belly: it is not their job to care on whether that's the best choice for you. And yet, they make my life a whole lot better.
I've noticed that the most lucrative jobs are seldom "alertable" public postings. And even if they are publicly posted, submitting my resume through a jobs-portal has an extremely low chance of producing an interview. The best ROI for my time has always come from responding to recruiters who message me with a comp range that fits my expectations.
>That's a very romantic view of the real-world experience of random messages on LinkedIn, many times with even the wrong name on them.
They never said the worst ROI didn't also come from responding to recuiters. I've met great ones that lead me to interesting roles and ones that tried to gaslight me on the same platform. It's a people problem more than a recruiter problem specifically.
In 2019 I got catfished by a recruiter. They put together the perfect story for me. I would be able to give back, change the world, have a connection, do something real. They picked at my tumbler and opened the lock.
The company I interviewed for was the same sugary sweet continuation. World's A-class HR department, it was like getting pumped to go on a cruise. Boy, was I about to get duped.
I got hired, and, it's the same sad song I won't bore you with - I ended up in a cube as a professional bench warmer, never getting access to any environments, just being paid to keep a cube ready for a shrink wrapped, ready to go engineer someday, I guess. I only made it to month 5 before I blew out. My old company took me back. They got a much more loyal version of myself. I'm glad to have the experience - one and done.
The same recruiter hit me up a few months later. I told him what had happened. He didn't seem phased. I quipped, 'So I am surprised you're even willing to talk to me'. He said I made it to 90 days there and he got paid, he was ready to do it again, and what did I want for round 2?
TL;DR: setup auto-responders, ask for a huge premium over current salary (the article suggests 50%), make sure salary aligns before doing any screening. Worst case you get data points on what the industry is paying.
You can add your interpretation afterwards, but you can simply not TL;DR if you want to respond.
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that said:
>if everybody starts using these "techniques" that recruiters will devise defenses...
good. for software engineers especially they shouldn't try to automate the process of finding talent.
>Use the time to setup alerts for companies/jobs you really aspire to get to, and fight for those instead.
that implies you have aspirations and not just whatever gives you the highest pay. At least, that's the vibe I get a lot from HN comments.
Hard disagree. Respond to all of them. You never know when they'll contact you again for a job you're actually interested in, or when you'll be in need.
I respond to and connect to most recruiters. It's been hugely beneficial to my career.
I see your point of view. TBH, I'm happy to connect with a recruiter that is a direct employee and recruiting for a company I'd be interested in applying directly (e.g. Apple).
The randos I pass. Soon, I guess the way is to ditch LinkedIn as a whole, given it became just your normalised crap off-topic posts network.
They don't get paid if you leave before 3-6 months, so only really shitty "butts in seats" recruiters (that usually offshore lead gen and qualification) will do this. Good recruiters will work with you to find something that fits you.
99% of recruiters that contact me have no idea where I live, no idea of my work history, no idea of my salary requirements and are always trying to pitch me ditch digging salaries in Calcutta.
The number of times I receive a call or an email urgently requesting my application for a part time in person job doing desktop support in Texas or Maryland or Colorado or Florida when I live in Washington has become a satire of absurdity in my life now.
To add insult to injury is how they're offering $11-$15 an hour to start, which is ridiculous for a job that requires certifications and at least an associates degree to begin with, but I guess that explains why they're not doing any research and just casting a huge net to see if they can catch anyone to fill the position.
The cream on the coffee is when they call me and tell me about this wonderful job blah blah blah, great way to get your foot in the door blah blah blah and then proudly say how their salaries are very competitive and they're offering $40 to start.
And I say, $40 an hour?
And they recoil in horror and fall all over themselves to clarify they mean $40,000 a year
And then I tell them I won't consider any job that isn't paying $75 at a minimum.
And they say, "$75,000 a year? We might have some in that range."
And I say, "No, $75 an hour"
And they say, without fail, "NOBODY IS PAYING THAT MUCH!" as if they are personally offended that some peon pissant subhuman piece of garbage like myself is daring to waste their time
And I let them rant for a minute and then I say, "Well, I'm already making over $70 an hour, so I would need more money than that to consider a move."
And then the conversation gets real quiet for a moment, and then they mumble, "Well, if I hear of anything in your price range I'll keep you in mind..." and they hang up.
This isn't a "it happened to me once" thing. This conversation has happened 3 times in the last 2 years, and many times before that. It's beyond a joke, parody isn't a strong enough word for it. It's maddening.
I'd just refine it to "never ignore a GOOD recruiter".
I'd say 8 times out of 10 recruiters never do what they promised they were going to do. They'll ghost you randomly, tell you you need to urgently get your CV to them then you never hear from them again, you tell them your job requirements and they immediately send you crap that clearly isn't a good match.
I'm not going to waste my time replying to every recruiter only to have 80% of them not even give me the common courtesy I give them.
But the good ones are worth working with. They know their stuff, communicate professionally and listen to what you say.
In successful case, you'll interact with them for a new job and never hear back again (they got you a dream job). If you're hearing from them again, what was wrong with the first job they got you?
You can't go by recommendations. A recruiter may have been decent when working with a certain client and then be shitty with another client.
If you've never interacted with them, reply. I always do. But judge them on how the conversation continues.
If they ghost you after promising X, Y, Z, then I don't interact with them again. They aren't reliable.
"In successful case, you'll interact with them for a new job and never hear back again (they got you a dream job)."
Clearly if they landed you your dream job they didn't ghost you in the middle of the process, right? They must have followed through? Communicated professionally?
You totally can know up-front. My colleague's Linkedin bio clearly states "Not interested in contract work.", once in a blue moon he'll get a recruiter that actually read his profile!
is your colleague active on LinkedIn, or is this just some prestige thing? Like, looking through my LinkedIn, I get maybe 20% contract work at most, and I don't post any specific requirements or salaries.
Likewise, while I've gotten some pitches that aren't in my domain, and 2 that weren't even software engineering gigs, I'd say 90% of emails seem to at least be loosely in the ballpark, and of those half of them seem like "okay, it at least got the right kinds of positions). Most of the rest tends to be web development for some reason, though (again, I don't have any specific request on my LinkedIn).
My rough experience has been that internal recruiters are the best to work with, independent third party recruiters should be ignored 100% of the time, and outside recruiters are a very mixed bag, with the early careers ones more polite but sloppy compared to the efficiency of highly experienced ones who border on sociopathic in their behavior.
Agreed. Internal recruiters are in for the long run. Their client is the only client. They won't be moving on from that. They have a better chance of caring about the company's future.
You kind of can tell. Not 100%, but enough to be useful.
One recruiter asked if I wanted a job. I said no. He asked if I knew anyone else who did. I gave him a name. He said, "Oh, he works for X? I recruit for them; I can't present a person from there for somewhere else." I was really impressed. A recruiter with ethics? I made a note - next time I need a job, call this guy.
Sometimes you can tell by the way they talk to you. When you say, for example, "I mostly do embedded software", do they know what that is? Do they know that they should stop sending you web front end jobs?
As I said, not 100%. But if I can deal with the best 20% of recruiters (with an occasional mistake thrown in), that's still good enough.
I've deleted my LinkedIn profile because the constant recruiter spam was distracting me from focusing on my current job.
Yes, it's good to consider if there are better opportunities out there but not every other day.
It's a constant temptation in your face. At the smallest of issues at work, you think about replying to that recruiter's spam. It's not productive and makes you think of the easy (lol?) way out instead of working on the underlying issues of why you're even considering replying.
As with news, I take a more focused approach. When I need a job, I'll look for it.
Ignore completely. I never got a job through referral in 25 years of working in this industry. The only times I almost got a job like that, the pay was horrible.
Sure, that could have helped but I never had trouble going through the HR funnel, so my experience might not be good advice.
"Unfollowing" doesn't work as the recommendations for even more dystopian lunatic non-sensical content keeps coming. This[1] is a good humoristic view on the state of LinkedIn, but it is sadly too close to reality :)
A bit of a naive approach in my opinion - nobody will tell you the name of the client or even a vague salary range without a phone call - otherwise they would have included it in their first message. Also, nobody will read that long email. It is too long winded, and if the goal is for the recruiter not to respond, then it might be effective (but then you could also ignore incoming requests, which is just easier and less pain).
Stop sending me machine generated emails based on keyword scans and then I might not ignore you. As it stands, I have to alert recruiters about what hiring managers will see as a red flag, the recruiter should have seen this but they're using scripts pretending to be personal review, then they ghost without even a courtesy reply only to cold email me with a script again in a couple of weeks and the process starts again. Recruiters need to be regulated like real estate agents are before their industry's reputation sinks as low as realtors used to be. That should include ethics and professionalism training with review boards that can hand out penalties, including loss of license/certification, to those who refuse to abide by the industry's standards. Or just keep going the route of used car salesmen in reputation and watch the industry implode.
What I have tried is also saying "It's cool that you saw my profile and liked it, can you elaborate on what it is about the profile that you see is a good fit? Any particular technology or experience that makes me suitable for this position? What profiles did you check was it GitHub/StackOverflow/LinkedIn?".
I have never in my entire career (which is older than those websites) had a response that indicated they had found or read any of the profile pages in question.
A good idea I learned to weed out the worst spam recruiters is to have a message on your LinkedIn profile saying "If you read this and want to contact me about an opportuntity, please include the following word: toaster". You'll instantly see if someone actually read your profile.
I didn't say "I don't think you read my profile, prove it!". I said "Great that you found it attractive, is there anything in particular you thought was a matching competence/experince etc".
There is a difference. And I'm genuinely curious about it because it affects how interested I am in the position (For example, if they found some 15 year old thing I worked on a sign that I want to work on their legacy project maybe I'm not so interested), so it's not only a way to weed out bots and spam. So yes, if they can't at least try answer that then I wouldn't go near that recruiter. Win win indeed.
That's a great idea to make the recruiter actually look at your profile and ensure it indeed matches the offer. Too many lazy recruiters do a simple linked-in search and bulk email everyone who matches.
I had a "great offer - perfect fit for your skillset" notice from a recruiter recently, describing me as a "standout candidate" and urging me to apply. I read the description and replied back "which part of the position makes me the "standout candidate?" is it the complete lack of alignment in skills? (they wanted a javascript dev, I'm a former C/C++/C# dev that transitioned to BA then Product Owner for the past decade.) Maybe it's the "easy commute" of only 9 hours 45 minutes each way? (the job is in northern Ohio, I'm in central North Carolina!)
Sadly this recruiter never responded. Missed opportunity. If they came back with a humorous response (e.g. "oops! That's our mistake, but let us tell you about something else...") I might have continued to work with them. Instead, I just added to my block list.
I have a canned response for most recruiters when I'm not looking.
But when a recruiter makes it clear they've actually paid attention -- a recent one was someone who said they realised I probably wasn't ready to move on yet, having only been at my current job for ten months -- then I write a personal response and thank them for actually taking time, and send them a connection request. They'll be my first stops for job searches in the future.
Here in the UK recruiters get a lot of flak but the reality is that they are the oil that keeps the machine running. It's in their own interest to get you a higher pay and to sell your profile as they get comissions. Often they do the heavy lifting in that regard. Then all you need to do is provide the skill and work. However the UK is undergoing a severe drought in terms of jobs and contracts and they are the first to tell you this.
The best jobs come through word of mouth and peer-to-peer connections which you develop over the lifetime of your career. I've had mixed results with recruiters. In the end they're in it for themselves, so have an intrinsic interest in selling a fit on both sides of the negotiation even when there might not be one. And the fees they charge can create a barrier or resent from the corporate side.
Recruiters are just one kind of connection, and a very mixed bag. Cultivate relationships, try not to burn bridges, find the people whose work you admire and make professional friendships with them.
Also, having been in industry long enough to see this a couple times: there's a huge difference between what recruiters do during economic downturn periods versus booms. In the down periods they end up acting as gatekeepers. In the booms they end up being the folks aggressively pushing people onto the bus. I'm sure there's a healthy median in there somewhere, but it's really tricky to find and assess a good recruiter -- especially during boom times. (We're not quite in a down time yet, but getting close).
>The best jobs come through word of mouth and peer-to-peer connections which you develop over the lifetime of your career.
sure, but most people don't have those. be it because they are starting out, they are in a smaller area, or their connections simply don't find any openings. I havent come across that magical moment yet where a co-worker contacts me, says "I need you", and 2-3 weeks later you're in a new job. Until then, I explore other options, and recruiters are just that.
Recruiters are a barrier between you and ground truth. If your resume is in demand and expected salary is high enough they can keep the pipeline full. If it is not and most likely you are reaching out to them, instead of the opposite, then you are simply running from the truth.
Reasons because you are appealing to potential employers or not. I witnessed terrible candidates being successfully pitched to large corporations. Because candidates knew how to game the story telling and recruiters wanted the commission worth one month of a high salary. Conversely weaker candidates, for whatever reason, are simply idled without any feedback. If this is the case you are much better off contacting potential employers directly to find out why. Ground truth.
I remember that time at a company event where I told the human resources lady that I didn't even have a LinkedIn profile. She looked at me as if I was a mystical unicorn. (I do have a LinkedIn now - current company pretty much required it as part of my advancement).
My skillset at present is kind of niche (Nginx+Lua). The carpet-bombing mass-email approach that recruiters tend to use (looking for, say, a "Node programmer with experience in React and Mongo") doesn't really match me well. Or it does match the me but from 10 years ago.
This feels like that meme where raccoons are telling people to leave their trash outside so they can ransack the trash cans.
Of course recruiters would say this. If you are so naive that you'd buy into this narrative I have a submarine adventure for sale you might be interested in.
I will caveat this bad and misleading advice with something more useful:
You never know which recruiters will actually have reasonable work for you. Most do NOT deserve even a microsecond of your time. But up front, they will all look the same. I got one of the most meaningful jobs of my life through a recruiter.
I hate them to my bone because they do not have my interest in mind, and they will be very deceptive and dishonest about what's going on. They are not there to be friendly, nice or care about you. They are a repetitional splash guard for the awful, inhuman and socially toxic behavior that corporate values celebrate.
The recruiter that got me a good job was honest and up-front, he wasn't playing games. The key is dealing with reasonable people, and I think the recruiter industry just attracts a lot of people who are prone to "selling" things regardless of merit.
To put my response to the title / article in a more poetic format
Recruiters are used car salesmen, just because you can smell their sleeze a mile away doesn't mean there isn't a gem barn find on the lot. YMMV.
Recruiters would say to sent a copy-paste template response back and ask for 50% over your current income? Love to meet them, in that case.
TBH your advice can apply to any part of life: most of it sucks but you get some gems. It's more of a philosophical question on how much of that you want to dig , and some are fine getting dirty to find that gem. even if it's a 1%. Me personally, I'm content at my salary level and don't need to minmax like the article, especially since I have a very specfic career line in mind.
> Recruiters would say to sent a copy-paste template response back and ask for 50% over your current income? Love to meet them, in that case.
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
> TBH your advice can apply to any part of life: most of it sucks but you get some gems.
I agree and to counterpoint my previous argument, compassion for these recruiters is important because discounting them all cuts you off from opportunity. All I can say to that is be open to things outside of your expectations, but also don't allow people to violate your values. You have to speak up for yourself, with self respect and dignity. These people are trained to "make it happen" not to ensure long-term success.
I think for me it's a "I've been burned and I have difficulty trusting" situation. I find that the incentives for this industry do not align with the people it serves. Who it serves is the real customer, and the money serves the customer.
Who's the customer, the employee or the employer? The system is working as expected, it's not made for me.
too good to ask for a salary that you know will throw off most recruiters? HN loves to boast about those kinds of hard balls.
>Who's the customer, the employee or the employer? The system is working as expected, it's not made for me.
I never had it work for me, never thought it did. But yeah, that's my entire life.
Personal life aside, I just bear with it until I don't have to anymore. And I have at least a decade more to bear. I don't want to be hired and laid off less than a year later, I don't want to blindly throw out apps into a job portal that aren't checked over half the time, I don't want to have to filter through a bunch of spam recruiters to find leads, and I don't want to have to do 5 rounds of interviews over a month only to get an automated rejection letter with zero feedback. I don't want to be 3 interviews deep before revealing that a "flexible hybrid role" in fact required me to move across the country for full in-office work.
But I also know I'm not some crackshot charismatic programmer who worked for FAANG who has buddies that can drag me into the next big thing. Nor am I close to retiring or even breaking off with current finances. I'm mostly alone, and I'm at best average. So I gotta jump through the average hoops until I can secure myself away from corporate.
I'm in a similar boat. I am trying to make things move forward as best I can. Unfortunately having self respect and not being willing to let people walk on me socially is career limiting.
I guess what pisses me off most is what I'll call the metadishonesty of it all. It's a system of exploitation we are supposed to be happy to be abused by. We are looked at as heretics for suggesting it doesn't need to be as awful as it is. Yet we continue to subject ourselves to it despite knowing it wont work because what the fuck else are you supposed to do?
I have an answer, but it's not a satisfying one. I'm working on making fishing lures. I found a widget I can own 100% myself and I'm trying to carve out a little e-commerce 1 man show. I hope it works. I'm working the most soul crushingly corporate job I've ever had and it takes every ounce of energy I have to tolerate that. When I am not stressing about my job I have to find a way to use what little energy I have left (none) to keep building the technical things I wish I could do at work.
Even the great jobs I had were rampant with inequality and unfairness. I looked past it because I was enjoying what I did. It always sucks on the outside there's no warmth away from the fire. Fire is still dangerous and you can be pushed into the firepit for the benefit of others. This doesn't seem to matter when you are alone in the cold.
Best of luck with your side business in that case. I have a similar "exit strategy" myself, but working on an indie game has never been described as a safe investment. I may not be frustrated at the job market, but I don't wanna be another one of those stories of "I quit my full time job to make this cruddy rougelite! Why does the world hate me".
Similar to my current situation, I want to make sure I have savings and backup plans and backup-backup plans for if/when that venture fails. But I want to try at least once, something to truly call "my own", made on my own power.
> I hate them to my bone because they do not have my interest in mind, and they will be very deceptive and dishonest about what's going on. They are not there to be friendly, nice or care about you. They are a repetitional splash guard for the awful, inhuman and socially toxic behavior that corporate values celebrate.
It's not a case that "recruiter" is the politically correct version of "head hunter".
While I get where this is going as far as salary potential goes.
I also strongly disagree. Early in my career I wasted a lot of time from bad interviews because a recruiter seemed to care more about just getting numbers in for an interview than actually good interviews.
I have had a recruiter get me in for a job and then just a couple months later call me asking if I am looking for a new opportunity (to be clear, the same person).
I have had recruiters completely waste my time and send me to group interviews for tech jobs (by this I mean one person interviewing 10 or so of us at the same time... who does that for a tech job?!?).
Oh and then there was that fun time that I had 2 different offers from companies with 2 different recruiters and had the fun situation of one of them trying really hard to convince me to not take the other job even though I kept trying to make it clear that I would learn more in the other job. It was less money but a far better learning opportunity.
Because of the constant push from recruiters to get for money I ended up having several jobs that lasted for a year or less that eventually came to give me problems getting my most recent job. Yes I could have done better with this myself but sometimes it can be hard to ignore that magic increase in money.
So no, I will continue to ignore most recruiters since I have wasted enough time in my career as it is going on bogus interviews and I have had to tell off at least one that I will never work with again.
Also, I get enough literal spam calls as it is. I am not going to answer your recruiter call.
It's a viable strategy to increase TC, however I would not follow it for three reasons:
1. The algorithm is suboptimal as you will be applying to one job at a time and won't have any negotiation leverage. You might get what the recruiter promised but not as much if you applied even to one more firm with a similar TC.
2. This requires frequent job charges, which may be an impediment to further job prospects. Depends on your field though.
3. It amplifies recruiter spam, every response, even a rejection, raises your score in the spam databases, much so a non-rejection like this. I used to politely decline recruiter spam until I began to notice I keep getting spammed by the same firms/people. I then stopped responding and that reduced the spam significantly.
I've worked in this field since the average HN commentator was in diapers. It's my experience that the common wisdom about the uselessness of recruiters is, if anything, an understatement.
They don't read, they don't understand anything about what they're selling, they often lie, and they don't care. There may be a few exceptions, but if so, they are so few and far between that it's not worth trying to sort through the rest.
Ridiculous. Facebook has been hassling me for years. I’d never work there for any amount of money nor will I communicate with their hounds. I don’t owe them anything. If recruiters don’t want to be ignored they need to represent ethical clients.
I do not understand the vitriol against them. They literally exist to find people jobs! There are bad ones, sure, but there are also lots of good ones!
Recruiters aren't as effective as referrals in getting people placed, but a good recruiter goes a long way!
One nit: Their auto-response template is way too long for a first response.
Recruiters, as they correctly indicated, are cold-calling people, usually based on leads in LinkedIn Recruiter or very targeted Google searches. This means that they are going to spend very little time qualifying people that they find. (Just because they found you doesn't mean you're a qualified lead!)
While I definitely agree with stating what you're looking for up front (ESPECIALLY the role you want, compensation targets, and other preferences, like remote/hybrid and unlimited vacation), you can do that in a short paragraph with a call to action at the end, like this:
"Thank you for messaging me! I would love to talk but want to discuss compensation and preferences first to respect each others time. I'm looking for ${x,y,z}. Will this role fulfill what I'm looking for? If so, let's talk on $DATE. Looking forward to hearing from you!"
Super short, direct, easy to read, and the recruiter can posit what you're after within a few seconds.
Remember: recruiters WANT to place candidates at the highest base salary they can. They are paid on that. The easier you make it possible for them to do this, the harder they will work to place you.
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[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] thread"I won't move unless I get at least X as my current team is really cool, so I'd want atleast that to consider the move".
So if you're throwing me a job that is completely unsuited, no, don't tell me if you hear of anything else. You're just throwing every job at every candidate, and hoping that something sticks for someone. In the process, you're wasting my time (and everyone else's). The odds are too high that your next "opportunity" is also going to be a waste of my time, so no, don't let me know.
And, in fact, I just went through this. I was job hunting, and I put my resume on Monster and Indeed. I started getting garbage offers by email - offers that looked like they detected that I was "technical" and a job was "technical", but not much closer than that. But most of those emails also had a (not very obvious!) "unsubscribe" button. Surprisingly, that actually worked. (I mean, there were a number of such places, so I had to do it several times...)
This is why I dislike linkedin. When everything was done via email, it was much simpler to find all previous interactions with that person if they cropped up again. My own minimal CRM.
For most companies I would give them "I want 300k CAD base salary to consider it" & that'd usually end the conversation right there
A year ago Timescale reached out, seemed like an interesting situation (good fit since I work on Citus), so I lowered the bar & told them I'd want 190k CAD base & 40k CAD signing bonus to consider it. They said that fell in range. Interviews went well. Unfortunately it turned out my ask wasn't in range: 180k CAD (apparently this was top of range for the level's band now) & only some options for signing, base would be total comp since it'd be as a contractor
So I let them know when I say "I want X to consider the position" that means I'm telling them a hard limit floor. Still, having a competing offer that was somewhat competitive with my current role (base quite a bit lower, but shares/bonus make up good portion of total comp) enabled late promo with nice raise
So this worked out for me, but recruiters will tell you X is okay & then try talk you down at the end. Maybe my wording should've been clearer that I was disclosing my floor to them
"I want X" and got a response that X was very within the range.
Then they deducted all benefits from X and showed me a contract for Y.
Recruiters will just tell you whatever you want to hear.
Life lesson: never leave any job unless you have another one with a binding contract signed from both parties.
Absolutely worth it. Pay is multiples of what European companies pay, culture is way better and colleagues are exceptional.
I've worked without a degree for 20 years. Recently got one for personal achievement purposes. Totally not worth it from an career investment perspective, IMHO.
I can't say I learned much of anything useful in college, but I didn't want to be that guy that constantly was passed over for promotions and opportunities because I didn't have a degree and a less-qualified person did.
Well, if that's been your consistent experience, you're spoiled even _for_ a developer - I have 30 years experience and a decent degree in CS, and I've had to go looking for new jobs whenever I've needed one and been turned down for many, but I do agree the process is _way_ easier than any other line of work.
Of course recruiters can be useful, but you need to understand their limitations. They just want to shortlist five candidates to a prospective client, and beyond this, they don't care.
Of course, they can be helpful if you end up on their shortlist. However, I would also recommend applying directly to jobs. Recruiters do not care if the job you are applying will result in working for the devil himself, as long as they get their commission.
> Over the last 20 years a programmer, team lead and technical architect. I'm a father and podcast on topics in professional development and software engineering
>However, I would also recommend applying directly to jobs.
They are helpful for awareness. Especially when seeking out startups. I'm not going to randomly find those on a job board often.
Where do they go?
I like checking out recruiters' CVs, and a lot of them seem to stick around in their profession.
Recruiters are paid to get someone (you?) to a position: it is not their job to care on whether that's the best choice for you.
The recommendations on the article require quite a lot of time managing recruiters, and it is only a matter of time, if everybody starts using these "techniques" that recruiters will devise defenses...
So I'll give an opposite view: ignore random recruiters. Use the time to setup alerts for companies/jobs you really aspire to get to, and fight for those instead.
Others may charge it back to the hiring department and it’s eating into hiring bonus budget. Otoh, many companies pay hiring bonuses out of the HR budget.
I've noticed that the most lucrative jobs are seldom "alertable" public postings. And even if they are publicly posted, submitting my resume through a jobs-portal has an extremely low chance of producing an interview. The best ROI for my time has always come from responding to recruiters who message me with a comp range that fits my expectations.
I haven't really come across those kind of positions that are secret or not advertised.
> The best ROI for my time has always come from responding to recruiters who message me...
That's a very romantic view of the real-world experience of random messages on LinkedIn, many times with even the wrong name on them.
They never said the worst ROI didn't also come from responding to recuiters. I've met great ones that lead me to interesting roles and ones that tried to gaslight me on the same platform. It's a people problem more than a recruiter problem specifically.
"GREAT COMPANY, MARKET LEADER, LOOKING FOR AN EXPERIENCED PHYTON DEVELOPPER"
I wish i was joking, but this isn't that far from what i received, multiple times.
Yes, the caps lock is part of the message.
The company I interviewed for was the same sugary sweet continuation. World's A-class HR department, it was like getting pumped to go on a cruise. Boy, was I about to get duped.
I got hired, and, it's the same sad song I won't bore you with - I ended up in a cube as a professional bench warmer, never getting access to any environments, just being paid to keep a cube ready for a shrink wrapped, ready to go engineer someday, I guess. I only made it to month 5 before I blew out. My old company took me back. They got a much more loyal version of myself. I'm glad to have the experience - one and done.
The same recruiter hit me up a few months later. I told him what had happened. He didn't seem phased. I quipped, 'So I am surprised you're even willing to talk to me'. He said I made it to 90 days there and he got paid, he was ready to do it again, and what did I want for round 2?
TL;DR: setup auto-responders, ask for a huge premium over current salary (the article suggests 50%), make sure salary aligns before doing any screening. Worst case you get data points on what the industry is paying.
You can add your interpretation afterwards, but you can simply not TL;DR if you want to respond.
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that said:
>if everybody starts using these "techniques" that recruiters will devise defenses...
good. for software engineers especially they shouldn't try to automate the process of finding talent.
>Use the time to setup alerts for companies/jobs you really aspire to get to, and fight for those instead.
that implies you have aspirations and not just whatever gives you the highest pay. At least, that's the vibe I get a lot from HN comments.
I respond to and connect to most recruiters. It's been hugely beneficial to my career.
The randos I pass. Soon, I guess the way is to ditch LinkedIn as a whole, given it became just your normalised crap off-topic posts network.
The number of times I receive a call or an email urgently requesting my application for a part time in person job doing desktop support in Texas or Maryland or Colorado or Florida when I live in Washington has become a satire of absurdity in my life now.
To add insult to injury is how they're offering $11-$15 an hour to start, which is ridiculous for a job that requires certifications and at least an associates degree to begin with, but I guess that explains why they're not doing any research and just casting a huge net to see if they can catch anyone to fill the position.
The cream on the coffee is when they call me and tell me about this wonderful job blah blah blah, great way to get your foot in the door blah blah blah and then proudly say how their salaries are very competitive and they're offering $40 to start.
And I say, $40 an hour?
And they recoil in horror and fall all over themselves to clarify they mean $40,000 a year
And then I tell them I won't consider any job that isn't paying $75 at a minimum.
And they say, "$75,000 a year? We might have some in that range."
And I say, "No, $75 an hour"
And they say, without fail, "NOBODY IS PAYING THAT MUCH!" as if they are personally offended that some peon pissant subhuman piece of garbage like myself is daring to waste their time
And I let them rant for a minute and then I say, "Well, I'm already making over $70 an hour, so I would need more money than that to consider a move."
And then the conversation gets real quiet for a moment, and then they mumble, "Well, if I hear of anything in your price range I'll keep you in mind..." and they hang up.
This isn't a "it happened to me once" thing. This conversation has happened 3 times in the last 2 years, and many times before that. It's beyond a joke, parody isn't a strong enough word for it. It's maddening.
I'd say 8 times out of 10 recruiters never do what they promised they were going to do. They'll ghost you randomly, tell you you need to urgently get your CV to them then you never hear from them again, you tell them your job requirements and they immediately send you crap that clearly isn't a good match.
I'm not going to waste my time replying to every recruiter only to have 80% of them not even give me the common courtesy I give them.
But the good ones are worth working with. They know their stuff, communicate professionally and listen to what you say.
In successful case, you'll interact with them for a new job and never hear back again (they got you a dream job). If you're hearing from them again, what was wrong with the first job they got you?
You can't go by recommendations. A recruiter may have been decent when working with a certain client and then be shitty with another client.
If they ghost you after promising X, Y, Z, then I don't interact with them again. They aren't reliable.
"In successful case, you'll interact with them for a new job and never hear back again (they got you a dream job)."
Clearly if they landed you your dream job they didn't ghost you in the middle of the process, right? They must have followed through? Communicated professionally?
Likewise, while I've gotten some pitches that aren't in my domain, and 2 that weren't even software engineering gigs, I'd say 90% of emails seem to at least be loosely in the ballpark, and of those half of them seem like "okay, it at least got the right kinds of positions). Most of the rest tends to be web development for some reason, though (again, I don't have any specific request on my LinkedIn).
One recruiter asked if I wanted a job. I said no. He asked if I knew anyone else who did. I gave him a name. He said, "Oh, he works for X? I recruit for them; I can't present a person from there for somewhere else." I was really impressed. A recruiter with ethics? I made a note - next time I need a job, call this guy.
Sometimes you can tell by the way they talk to you. When you say, for example, "I mostly do embedded software", do they know what that is? Do they know that they should stop sending you web front end jobs?
As I said, not 100%. But if I can deal with the best 20% of recruiters (with an occasional mistake thrown in), that's still good enough.
Yes, it's good to consider if there are better opportunities out there but not every other day.
It's a constant temptation in your face. At the smallest of issues at work, you think about replying to that recruiter's spam. It's not productive and makes you think of the easy (lol?) way out instead of working on the underlying issues of why you're even considering replying.
As with news, I take a more focused approach. When I need a job, I'll look for it.
The only thing blocking me to do that is that it is sort of a contact list that you can reach out to people you worked in past, etc.
Do you use something like a fake account to access that info, or just ignore that completely?
Sure, that could have helped but I never had trouble going through the HR funnel, so my experience might not be good advice.
"Unfollowing" doesn't work as the recommendations for even more dystopian lunatic non-sensical content keeps coming. This[1] is a good humoristic view on the state of LinkedIn, but it is sadly too close to reality :)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IHt9PJM8Md8
"Hi Richard" (I'm not Richard)
"Hi {FirstName}"
"Hope this email finds you well. Hope this email finds you well."
A good idea I learned to weed out the worst spam recruiters is to have a message on your LinkedIn profile saying "If you read this and want to contact me about an opportuntity, please include the following word: toaster". You'll instantly see if someone actually read your profile.
There is a difference. And I'm genuinely curious about it because it affects how interested I am in the position (For example, if they found some 15 year old thing I worked on a sign that I want to work on their legacy project maybe I'm not so interested), so it's not only a way to weed out bots and spam. So yes, if they can't at least try answer that then I wouldn't go near that recruiter. Win win indeed.
I had a "great offer - perfect fit for your skillset" notice from a recruiter recently, describing me as a "standout candidate" and urging me to apply. I read the description and replied back "which part of the position makes me the "standout candidate?" is it the complete lack of alignment in skills? (they wanted a javascript dev, I'm a former C/C++/C# dev that transitioned to BA then Product Owner for the past decade.) Maybe it's the "easy commute" of only 9 hours 45 minutes each way? (the job is in northern Ohio, I'm in central North Carolina!) Sadly this recruiter never responded. Missed opportunity. If they came back with a humorous response (e.g. "oops! That's our mistake, but let us tell you about something else...") I might have continued to work with them. Instead, I just added to my block list.
But when a recruiter makes it clear they've actually paid attention -- a recent one was someone who said they realised I probably wasn't ready to move on yet, having only been at my current job for ten months -- then I write a personal response and thank them for actually taking time, and send them a connection request. They'll be my first stops for job searches in the future.
Recruiters are just one kind of connection, and a very mixed bag. Cultivate relationships, try not to burn bridges, find the people whose work you admire and make professional friendships with them.
Also, having been in industry long enough to see this a couple times: there's a huge difference between what recruiters do during economic downturn periods versus booms. In the down periods they end up acting as gatekeepers. In the booms they end up being the folks aggressively pushing people onto the bus. I'm sure there's a healthy median in there somewhere, but it's really tricky to find and assess a good recruiter -- especially during boom times. (We're not quite in a down time yet, but getting close).
sure, but most people don't have those. be it because they are starting out, they are in a smaller area, or their connections simply don't find any openings. I havent come across that magical moment yet where a co-worker contacts me, says "I need you", and 2-3 weeks later you're in a new job. Until then, I explore other options, and recruiters are just that.
These will be harder for new hires to foment now that everything is moving remote.
with actual corp headhunters it's usually "give me a number" and then if the number looks good, we'll talk.
also watch out for scammers and phishing attempts, been a notable uptick in attempts using "check out this pdf job advert".
My skillset at present is kind of niche (Nginx+Lua). The carpet-bombing mass-email approach that recruiters tend to use (looking for, say, a "Node programmer with experience in React and Mongo") doesn't really match me well. Or it does match the me but from 10 years ago.
So yeah, I ignore them and it's fine.
Of course recruiters would say this. If you are so naive that you'd buy into this narrative I have a submarine adventure for sale you might be interested in.
I will caveat this bad and misleading advice with something more useful:
You never know which recruiters will actually have reasonable work for you. Most do NOT deserve even a microsecond of your time. But up front, they will all look the same. I got one of the most meaningful jobs of my life through a recruiter.
I hate them to my bone because they do not have my interest in mind, and they will be very deceptive and dishonest about what's going on. They are not there to be friendly, nice or care about you. They are a repetitional splash guard for the awful, inhuman and socially toxic behavior that corporate values celebrate.
The recruiter that got me a good job was honest and up-front, he wasn't playing games. The key is dealing with reasonable people, and I think the recruiter industry just attracts a lot of people who are prone to "selling" things regardless of merit.
To put my response to the title / article in a more poetic format
Recruiters are used car salesmen, just because you can smell their sleeze a mile away doesn't mean there isn't a gem barn find on the lot. YMMV.
TBH your advice can apply to any part of life: most of it sucks but you get some gems. It's more of a philosophical question on how much of that you want to dig , and some are fine getting dirty to find that gem. even if it's a 1%. Me personally, I'm content at my salary level and don't need to minmax like the article, especially since I have a very specfic career line in mind.
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
> TBH your advice can apply to any part of life: most of it sucks but you get some gems.
I agree and to counterpoint my previous argument, compassion for these recruiters is important because discounting them all cuts you off from opportunity. All I can say to that is be open to things outside of your expectations, but also don't allow people to violate your values. You have to speak up for yourself, with self respect and dignity. These people are trained to "make it happen" not to ensure long-term success.
I think for me it's a "I've been burned and I have difficulty trusting" situation. I find that the incentives for this industry do not align with the people it serves. Who it serves is the real customer, and the money serves the customer.
Who's the customer, the employee or the employer? The system is working as expected, it's not made for me.
too good to ask for a salary that you know will throw off most recruiters? HN loves to boast about those kinds of hard balls.
>Who's the customer, the employee or the employer? The system is working as expected, it's not made for me.
I never had it work for me, never thought it did. But yeah, that's my entire life.
Personal life aside, I just bear with it until I don't have to anymore. And I have at least a decade more to bear. I don't want to be hired and laid off less than a year later, I don't want to blindly throw out apps into a job portal that aren't checked over half the time, I don't want to have to filter through a bunch of spam recruiters to find leads, and I don't want to have to do 5 rounds of interviews over a month only to get an automated rejection letter with zero feedback. I don't want to be 3 interviews deep before revealing that a "flexible hybrid role" in fact required me to move across the country for full in-office work.
But I also know I'm not some crackshot charismatic programmer who worked for FAANG who has buddies that can drag me into the next big thing. Nor am I close to retiring or even breaking off with current finances. I'm mostly alone, and I'm at best average. So I gotta jump through the average hoops until I can secure myself away from corporate.
I guess what pisses me off most is what I'll call the metadishonesty of it all. It's a system of exploitation we are supposed to be happy to be abused by. We are looked at as heretics for suggesting it doesn't need to be as awful as it is. Yet we continue to subject ourselves to it despite knowing it wont work because what the fuck else are you supposed to do?
I have an answer, but it's not a satisfying one. I'm working on making fishing lures. I found a widget I can own 100% myself and I'm trying to carve out a little e-commerce 1 man show. I hope it works. I'm working the most soul crushingly corporate job I've ever had and it takes every ounce of energy I have to tolerate that. When I am not stressing about my job I have to find a way to use what little energy I have left (none) to keep building the technical things I wish I could do at work.
Even the great jobs I had were rampant with inequality and unfairness. I looked past it because I was enjoying what I did. It always sucks on the outside there's no warmth away from the fire. Fire is still dangerous and you can be pushed into the firepit for the benefit of others. This doesn't seem to matter when you are alone in the cold.
Similar to my current situation, I want to make sure I have savings and backup plans and backup-backup plans for if/when that venture fails. But I want to try at least once, something to truly call "my own", made on my own power.
It's not a case that "recruiter" is the politically correct version of "head hunter".
I also strongly disagree. Early in my career I wasted a lot of time from bad interviews because a recruiter seemed to care more about just getting numbers in for an interview than actually good interviews.
I have had a recruiter get me in for a job and then just a couple months later call me asking if I am looking for a new opportunity (to be clear, the same person).
I have had recruiters completely waste my time and send me to group interviews for tech jobs (by this I mean one person interviewing 10 or so of us at the same time... who does that for a tech job?!?).
Oh and then there was that fun time that I had 2 different offers from companies with 2 different recruiters and had the fun situation of one of them trying really hard to convince me to not take the other job even though I kept trying to make it clear that I would learn more in the other job. It was less money but a far better learning opportunity.
Because of the constant push from recruiters to get for money I ended up having several jobs that lasted for a year or less that eventually came to give me problems getting my most recent job. Yes I could have done better with this myself but sometimes it can be hard to ignore that magic increase in money.
So no, I will continue to ignore most recruiters since I have wasted enough time in my career as it is going on bogus interviews and I have had to tell off at least one that I will never work with again.
Also, I get enough literal spam calls as it is. I am not going to answer your recruiter call.
1. The algorithm is suboptimal as you will be applying to one job at a time and won't have any negotiation leverage. You might get what the recruiter promised but not as much if you applied even to one more firm with a similar TC.
2. This requires frequent job charges, which may be an impediment to further job prospects. Depends on your field though.
3. It amplifies recruiter spam, every response, even a rejection, raises your score in the spam databases, much so a non-rejection like this. I used to politely decline recruiter spam until I began to notice I keep getting spammed by the same firms/people. I then stopped responding and that reduced the spam significantly.
They don't read, they don't understand anything about what they're selling, they often lie, and they don't care. There may be a few exceptions, but if so, they are so few and far between that it's not worth trying to sort through the rest.
I do not understand the vitriol against them. They literally exist to find people jobs! There are bad ones, sure, but there are also lots of good ones!
Recruiters aren't as effective as referrals in getting people placed, but a good recruiter goes a long way!
One nit: Their auto-response template is way too long for a first response.
Recruiters, as they correctly indicated, are cold-calling people, usually based on leads in LinkedIn Recruiter or very targeted Google searches. This means that they are going to spend very little time qualifying people that they find. (Just because they found you doesn't mean you're a qualified lead!)
While I definitely agree with stating what you're looking for up front (ESPECIALLY the role you want, compensation targets, and other preferences, like remote/hybrid and unlimited vacation), you can do that in a short paragraph with a call to action at the end, like this:
"Thank you for messaging me! I would love to talk but want to discuss compensation and preferences first to respect each others time. I'm looking for ${x,y,z}. Will this role fulfill what I'm looking for? If so, let's talk on $DATE. Looking forward to hearing from you!"
Super short, direct, easy to read, and the recruiter can posit what you're after within a few seconds.
Remember: recruiters WANT to place candidates at the highest base salary they can. They are paid on that. The easier you make it possible for them to do this, the harder they will work to place you.